A Hard Day’s Night

It’s a little misleading to call the album A Hard Day’s Night a sound track. Yes, the songs are featured in the film A Hard Day’s Night, a comic road picture following the band’s misadventures on its way to a gig in London. Yes, the title track was written after Ringo Starr coined the phrase to explain his exhaustion after working on a movie set all night. But it’s also a studio album, the Beatles’ third, released at the height of Beatlemania in 1964. By then, American teenagers had already succumbed to the mop-topped allure of John, Paul, George and Ringo. But A Hard Day’s Night helped turn the group into more than just a passing fad. The album’s 13 songs were all written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Listen to it today — especially the tracks “If I Fell,” “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “I Should Have Known Better” — and it’s pretty clear that these lads from Liverpool were going to go far.